That Which Falls Has No Wings
That Which Falls Has No Wings
Even though she hadn't expected to return alive at all, Mash managed to flee with a surprising lack of injury.
Yet no joy of survival welled up inside her. On the contrary, every time she looked at her right arm, perfectly intact while her clothes and equipment were torn to shreds, the thought that dying might have been better just kept repeating itself.
At first, she thought she'd been spared on a simple whim.
Even within the Demon King's Army, such madmen were fairly common. From the bastard who'd let you live if you fought to his satisfaction, but would try to kill everything around him if left with incomplete combustion, forcing him to be stuck on the front lines half-coerced, to the bitch who dealt with the world by her own utterly incomprehensible standards and tried to force those standards onto others through physical violence.
Did one's mental state also deviate from the norm once their strength crossed a certain threshold? The Demon King's Army had a particularly high number of such people. So the caprice of a psychopath like that was something she could actually call familiar.
But the bastard demanded a deal.
In response, she hadn't just callously abandoned the corpses of her comrades, which could have served as evidence—at the very end, she'd even accepted a potion and found herself in the position of having to deliver his message as she returned. That was when she started questioning whether she could truly be said to have survived.
To be absolutely clear, the bastard could have slit her throat instead of driving his blade into the wyvern's back. There had been far more reasons to kill her than to let her live.
Was that all? Mash hadn't missed the moment he threw the potion at her, telling her to deliver a message, as if he'd only just then found some use for her.
But that was as far as her understanding went.
Even seeing it firsthand, she couldn't comprehend why he'd shown such reactions and actions. Pressing the issue would only get her killed, so she took the potion, choosing instead to return quickly with a fully healed body.
In exchange, she became a messenger pigeon.
She felt toyed with to the very end and wanted to ignore the promise and everything else, but... even a promise made to an enemy, ignoring it like that was something her pride wouldn't tolerate.
That was why Mash chose to agonize over what she might have missed, rather than venting uselessly.
She spent the full three days it took to reach the hideout agonizing, but she couldn't get any sense of where the bastard, who had been moving with the clear intent to kill them all, could have had a change of heart and reversed his decision. Sympathy? Eldmia had looked at her as nothing but a tool right up until that final moment.
She felt like she'd been tricked. Why she felt that way, she ultimately couldn't figure out.
Having walked all the way with this dilemma that yielded no answer no matter how many times she ran through it, Mash finally reached her destination and let out a long sigh.
"...I told you to run."
The contact zone for the special forces unit infiltrating Itisel was a sea cave at the base of a cliff, a good distance from human cities.
From the outside, the reefs made it look impossible to get in, but the original reefs had actually been cleared away and replaced with obstacles created through magic. You couldn't even jokingly call it suitable for long-term habitation, but it was only a temporary base for this mission, so concealment had taken priority.
"It was actually successful..."
Since the unit had withdrawn, the reefs should have been removed as well in order to take the boat out. But what met her eyes as she looked down at the cliff was a dense thicket of reefs, still firmly in place.
The situation didn't let her simply feel happy about her subordinates' loyalty, and another sigh escaped her, but she had to move. It had taken three days just to return while avoiding detection by the Human Race. Unable to light a fire or even sleep properly, she was physically at her limit in every respect.
Maybe that was why her head wasn't working.
Thinking that, Mash hoped that her subordinates had instead reconfigured the reefs for concealment and then fled, as she climbed down the cliff.
"Captain...?"
And seeing her subordinates looking at her with eyes full of hope, she finally let out a deep sigh. Soft-hearted bastards.
"Sorry. I made it back alive."
"Damn it, I told you! That she'd come back!"
"Alright, shut up. The sound echoes."
Judging by the looks of it, they clearly hadn't moved even after loading all the cargo, deciding to wait a few more days instead.
The cave, which had once been overflowing with signs of life, was now tidily emptied, and two of the three wyvern cages that had been on the boat had vanished, as if they'd been dumped into the sea. The wyvern sleeping inside the one remaining cage just raised its head briefly at the commotion before irritably flicking its tail and growling.
But regardless of what it did, not only the two Demonfolk subordinates who returned alive, but also the five Human Race subordinates who'd been along as rear support agents, all brightened and approached her as she just stepped onto the boat.
"What happened, Captain? Did you shake the bastard off?"
"It's a bit... complicated. I'll report first and then we'll talk. After that we're returning immediately, so prepare to set sail."
At the word 'return', both the atmosphere and the faces of her subordinates brightened further, but Mash wasn't relaxed enough to smile at it. So she hurried into the captain's quarters and pulled out the communication crystal orb before her subordinates could notice how serious she was.
Truthfully, calling it a captain's quarters was generous—it was just a cramped space barely big enough for a hammock to lie down in and a desk for writing reports. But the moment she entered the room, Mash felt the tension ease as if she'd come home.
Feeling bitter amid a change in emotion she couldn't have imagined only a few days earlier, she soon composed herself and channeled Magic Power into the crystal orb.
The connection wasn't immediate, but it didn't take very long either. A man with a familiar face and neatly combed-back hair appeared.
His horns were shaped a little unusually, so he wore his glasses on them rather than on his ears. He looked over Mash's face and then toward something beyond the crystal orb before giving a small nod and speaking.
-Identity confirmed. Squad Leader Mash, 23rd Special Squad. Is this a regular report?
An intonation devoid of emotion. The words she always heard.
"This is an emergency report."
And a different answer than usual. What followed was a slightly different, surprised reaction and a confirmation procedure.
-...Your emergency report is set to connect directly to command without passing through a commander-level officer. Are you certain?
It was a problem she'd agonized over the entire way here and decided upon, but when the situation actually hit, she nearly agonized over it again. Maybe it was because it was her first time seeing the face beyond the crystal orb shift from impassive to grave.
"...Certain. Operation Little Eldmia. Emergency priority."
But her answer was only slightly delayed; nothing changed. Even the communications mage connecting the crystal orb didn't ask again. At his gesture, the screen rippled and vanished.
And after a long while, Mash came face-to-face with a visage both familiar and unfamiliar.
There wasn't a soul in the Demon King's Army who didn't know the man standing before her, his immaculate uniform embroidered with various medals, as if proving that desk work was his primary duty. He was a figure everyone saw at least once after the induction ceremony.
"C-Commander!"
She'd been told it would be the command post, but she hadn't expected to see the commander of the Demon King's Army Special Operations Command himself. Mash instinctively straightened her posture and tried to salute. But the man reflected in the crystal orb simply raised a hand lightly, stopping her action, and spoke curtly.
-Skip the formalities and report directly.
Feeling like her head was spinning, Mash calmly began her progress report.
In the end, it felt like she was droning on about the mission's failure, but the system was the system, so she couldn't help it. Her only consolation was that the commander's expression showed no change as he received the report of her disastrous failure.
"...In conclusion, the capture or elimination of Eldmia Ega was impossible given our unit's capabilities. Direct engagement with the target resulted in the loss of two wyverns and two combatants, yet we failed to inflict even minor damage. Afterwards, I personally intervened against Eldmia to secure my subordinates' survival. I failed, but received a certain proposal, which allowed me to return."
But no matter how calmly she tried to speak the last part, a cold sweat broke out. Because the very fact that she had returned after receiving a proposal from the enemy in this situation was an absurdity in itself.
Contrary to her expectations, however, the commander maintained a far more composed attitude and simply asked back.
-A certain proposal?
"...In exchange for sparing my life, I was treated as a messenger pigeon."
Strictly speaking, having her life spared and receiving the messenger-pigeon proposal had been separate matters... but given who she was dealing with, Mash gave in to fear and lied.
-Hmm... The contents?
"...That is..."
When Mash hesitated, a change appeared on the commander's face for the first time. It was less an emotional shift and more a slight narrowing of his eyes as he examined her, but from Mash's perspective, it was a change that made her blood run cold.
Fortunately, the words that followed weren't a reprimand.
-Receiving an abrupt letter from the enemy is far more common than you'd think. And the contents they contain are usually devoid of dignity. Your hesitation is likely for a similar reason. Pay it no mind and deliver it verbatim.
At those words that seemed to see right through her, Mash squeezed her eyes shut and obeyed the order. Cursing Eldmia internally for telling her to deliver a message whose meaning was total fucking nonsense.
"I don't know if you're a fucking bastard or a bitch, but cut the bullshit and wait. I'll be coming to collect the price for the atrocities committed in the west soon anyway. Don't feel wronged. If you pulled that kind of shit and stayed unscathed for 8 years, isn't that a pretty long run already?... That is all."
And to prove absolutely that no personal feelings were mixed in, she stood at an even sharper attention than before.
-......
Within the odd silence, Mash lowered her gaze, which she'd subtly raised to check the commander's reaction. What she saw was the commander with a grave expression, covering his mouth and deep in thought. She didn't see the commander often, but he was a figure famously known for thoroughly hiding his emotions, so much so that he was nicknamed the Iron Mask. She was considerably flustered.
But more than anything, what bewildered her was the commander's gaze. He was still looking at her, yet somehow the atmosphere was different from just moments before.
It was as if... it was the same gaze as Eldmia's when he was falling from the sky, deciding whether to kill her or spare her.
-Anything else?
"Th-that was the last of it!"
-Understood. Return as scheduled.
With a click, the crystal orb's screen went dark. Finally releasing the tension she'd been holding, Mash sank to the floor without even realizing it.
"I reported a mission failure directly... and there's not even a hint of punishment?"
She was a member of the special forces. In the Demon King's Army special forces, the person holding command authority over a mission immediately notified subordinates of rewards or punishments according to the outcome. The consequences weren't carried out on the spot while a mission was still underway; the point was to make them clearly understand what situation they were in and act accordingly.
The absence of that usually meant one of two things.
That the commander was extremely lenient and would overlook this mission failure.
Or that she'd be silenced the moment she got back.
The possibility of someone simply forgetting the procedure was practically nonexistent. So Mash sat on the floor and had to wrack her brain.